Posted on 04/12/2015 3:58:03 PM PDT by AlmaKing
One legacy of 9-11 is the way all fire departments were able to leverage the sympathy into big budget increases.....I talked to a town commissioner in a small beach town in NC. The average income for the county is 26,000. The firefighters, who mostly have nothing to do, make 60K plus all the goobermint benefits and security.
I suspect this is not the only town in America with an under worked over paid fire department.
You’re correct, and in large proportion another segment of the government/union/Democrat rock solid alliance.
I think they get to bill. In many cases there is no need for a traditional fire truck to respond to a heart attack call. Double billing.
My discovery about fire fighters is that they have leveraged on local and state levels to have expensive fire sprinkler and monitoring systems installed in most rehabs as well as new construction. Effectively stopping multi construction off city water, and in some towns requiring it in single family new constructions.
This gives retirement jobs to firefighters as well as second incomes as they become owners and employees in inspections and installations.
All forced on you by the state and firefighter cronies.
And you are right about that as well.....not so much in this little town in particular, but across the country fo shizzle.
As an aside, about 2-3 days before 9-11, I saw a documentary on how superior the Cincinnati Fire Department was to the FDNY - because the unions prevented FDNY from buying modern equipment, because it would replace union jobs.
I wonder why no one ever asks why we were responding to 9-11 with equipment from the 1800s in many cases......there is an answer to it.
Oh, that documentary cannot be found today. I’m sure it was destroyed on, about 9-12.
damn, crony firemen.......sad fact is, there are many marines who now fake injury for disability, many cops who are corrupt, and even the fire fighters.
Lost and dying world....
Lift weights, eat, sleep, watch TV. Follow ambulance crews around town, retire at 55 with a full pension.
With modern advances in home construction and fire prevention nobody has fires anymore. If you asked a firefighter how many actual fires he saw in his career, he'd say one or two.
Another time it was an hispanic male who complained about injuring his shoulder in a soccer game; turns out he'd strained his muscle. They gave him a sling, and then he told them he was having trouble with his bowel movements. They prepared to take him to the ER, but when he learned he had to give the ER some identification, he declined (can you say illegal?). All they could do was tell him to go see a doctor.
I had my first 911 ambulance ride a few days after new years.
On a Sunday night I was by myself. The spouse was at some event that evening, a bit out of the ordinary.
About 6 or so, I felt the familiar pain of the kidney stone. Haven’t had one in 15 - 20 years. It hit hard and fast. I got as as far as the carport door intending to drive myself. That idea lasted for 20 seconds. I called around to spouse and got voice mail, called her cousin the former nurse. She had a problem with caring for her elderly mother so I called 911. 20 minutes later on drugs at the ER.
My wife got the message and met me during the drugs and took me home.
The ride was pleasant enough considering the misery.
I work in a medium sized police dept.ina medium sized city. All firemen are also emt’s This is because not every town has a rescue squad big enuff to respond to all the calls. I have waited for for quite awhile waiting on the squad...people are thankful that life saving personnel are coming...and they don’t care where they come from
In my home town it is more like a paid vacation.
Rural firefighters get lots of calls and have to treat every structure and car fire like it is a meth lab.
Yep—and lots of those firemen and their ilk retire at midlife with decades and decades of pension payments keyed off of those inflated salaries.
Impact fees and ambulance bills near $10,000, oh yeah.
In most communities, what used to be fire departments are now better described as emergency medicine departments that also extinguish fires. Nevertheless, they have a monopoly on firefighting skills, and the community will always have to maintain an adequate fire suppression capability, and that dictates the number of stations needed and your minimum personnel requirements. What our community has done is staff the minimum suppression staff, insist that they all be cross-trained in medical responses, then hired additional single purpose medical personnel. The latter are considerably cheaper than unionized firefighters, yet are fully qualified to provide emergency medical services, including transport.
Where the dividing line is between the staffing needed to provide fire and paramedic services, and the additional staff needed once the spare time of the career firefighting personnel has been reached is a matter of community size and standards. In our case, we crossed that line about five years ago, and the decision to hire people who were solely dedicated to the paramedic function has worked well.
The way it works here, a medical aid call gets the closest engine company, whose firefighter/paramedic provides immediate care, then the patient is turned over to the single purpose paramedics for transport.
I think that’s going to become a pretty common arrangement for mid-sized cities. You get maximum use out of your expensive personnel, then handle the overload in a more cost effective manner.
BTW, there’s an awful lot of smoke from a CO “prescribed” burn that wasn’t publicized much. Very windy, too.
Oh... and... Resuscitation trained EMT’s are nice, but fully trained paramedics provide a better standard of care. Fire departments should make paramedic certification a prerequisite for hiring.
The documentary film Burn, about the Detroit Fire Department, has some interesting insights along those lines. It’s a three buck rental at Amazon.
It’s true. Our guys don’t have anything to do and a 911 call gets the fire truck guys out along with an ambulance. Kinda nuts.
The ignorance on this thread needs an ambulance.
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